


Facilis descensus Averno

by ars_belli



Category: Thursday Next - Jasper Fforde
Genre: Backstory, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 14:50:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ars_belli/pseuds/ars_belli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Glimpses into Thursday's life and how she might have discovered the old Latin proverb: facilis descensus Averno, "the path to the underworld is easy," (it's the return that's hard).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Facilis descensus Averno

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally submitted for the "1sentence" challenge at Livejournal: given fifty prompts, compose one sentence each to link them to a relationship. I have taken some liberties with the single-sentence limit in this revised version. Attributions to other sources are the verse in #21 - Silence from "I wish I had an Angel," sung by Nightwish; the excerpt which Thursday recites in #22 - Journey from Book II of Paradise Lost; #33 - World begins with Hamlet's famous line from II.ii and #1 – Ring and #41 – Wait quote from Richard III, I.ii.

##### Silk

Margaret snorts in quiet contempt at the whispers she and Thursday hear behind them about Acheron Hades and the subtlety of his voice before the lecture hall bounces the two friends' laughter around despite themselves: honestly, can't the gossiping idiots think of a less clichéd metaphor?

##### View

The elite first-year English class is replete with scholarships, arrogance and lust for knowledge, so why must their first taste of his infamous genius reveal what they know already: "Post-modernism cannot exist without differing points of view?"

##### Cold

Against his will the laughter bubbles out when she hesitantly reaches for the mound of silk-lined fur that he holds.  
"You didn't think me so clichéd that I would bow and slide it around your shoulders, did you? I will never be that predictable."

##### Wait

"I'll have her, but I will not keep her long!"  
Professor Hades strides into the psychologist's room, letting his charm sink in and his student slink out.

##### Talk

She isn't quite sure how to reply when he suddenly informs her that he is indeed the hundred and twenty-first-great-grandson of Hades and Persephone and very sick of marking essays about Aeneas, his goody-two-shoes first cousin a hundred and twenty three times removed, but it doesn't matter really, because the words at the beginning of the night have no importance, only what is said at the end.

##### Dance

It is her daring joke that he must be a better dancer horizontally than vertically and his better riposte that she jokes yet dares neither of them.

##### Box

His office is filled with safety deposit boxes one day, small and grey and supposedly impenetrable, above all not to be opened, yet she knows that he is not merely avaricious nor completely human, the secrets he has stolen not quite safe.

##### Drink

The colour of crushed spring leaves dances in the glass, so clear and innocent, so unlike the dance on her tongue, the heat and spice and fire and wetness so like another of his offerings, one for which she has never had the courage.

##### Eclipse

Diana is Hades' accomplice tonight, the former washing the blood from his hands, the latter spilling it over the face of her chariot.

##### Laugh

He should never be able to make her writhe like his, insinuating himself beneath her defences with a mere touch of fingertips and lips and teeth, but he can, and she doesn't know whether it is he that frightens her or her willingness when he draws her blood, for he elicits not a cry of pain but gasping laughter.

##### Fall

She no longer cares about where she is supposed to be, scholarship and thesis publication no bribe to equal his snares.

##### Fever

"Tiresias, Father, wait!" Despair springs from his lips while the sheets twist around him like the Möbius strip of his nightmares and she wonders fleetingly if he is sick with conscience after all.

##### Breathe

Her fingers idly stroke his temples, while she chastises herself for not having the courage to say yes, yet her breathing staccatos and clogs in her throat whilst his is calm and even once again.

##### Lock

"So! _The White Devil_ ladies and gentlemen: character analyses are to be outside my door...pardon me, my cell...at eight am sharp tomorrow, as usual. If you have any questions regarding the critical frameworks each of you has chosen for the year's inaugural assessment, I will be in my--"  
"Cell as usual?" yells someone from the back, but Acheron merely holds his hands out for the handcuffs with a laugh, striding out brazenly as the lock snaps around his wrists.

##### Ice

At midnight, she ought never to be at his desk, in his chair still warm from his body, raising his glass in salute to him: “You are a truly repugnant man Hades.” His fingers interrupt her carefully articulated conclusion, impossibly elegant and impossibly cold, even more so than the ice plucked from her glass and held to her lips.

##### Candle

She is Psyche to his Cupid, daring to cast light upon the body of a goddess' son.

##### Temptation

The refusal slides easily from her tongue when she leaves, half a second's worth of dual betrayal, yet the temptation never wanes, even when his power over her does.

##### Farewells

"A worthy answer," her lecturer replies, for once applying a severity she has only seen in his plotting, "One which makes you almost as calculating as I am."

##### Wings

She buries her brother’s insignia, the cold, service-issue metal encased in warm earth the only part of Anton which will rest in his grave, wondering why all the evils in her life ensnare her with the joy of adventure.

##### Strength

There are twelve lines of "Braeburn, M." in the telephone directory and she doesn't have the courage to ring a single one.

##### Search

Thursday cannot quite understand Margaret's happiness over the phone, when her parents are angry and bitter and grounding a woman of twenty-five years, for God's sake, and confesses so in her letter, which has already returned from several addresses with "no such resident" printed on it in various different languages.

##### Hope

Thursday suspects it has something to do with her best friend's child, whom Margaret hopes will get a Nobel Prize and its grandparents an early miscarriage.

##### Cover

"Below the eight, above the law," she recalls Tamworth saying, sliding the solid SO-5 badge into her pocket: shield enough for her mistakes but not her ambition.

##### Unknown

The place in his file reserved for a mugshot is empty, just like his birth certificate when Tamworth managed to find it (or so canteen rumours say) but Thursday knows they would never believe the real one.

##### Body

When she espies him again, why must his crimes show the inhumanity he possesses less than his sixteen years more of non-age?

##### Lies

"I was never your protégée," his adversary snaps. Acheron waits for her to snarl that she was never nearly his lover either.

##### Whisper

"My dear Thursday, there was a time when you used to enjoy it when I sang your praises," his baritone carries easily to his star pupil, utterly unfazed that she is the one holding the loaded pistol. "Unless you still prefer them whispered into your ear?"

##### Highway

Acheron admires the Aston Martin (more accurately, its security system) -- probably the toy of some spoiled, twenty-something prat who shares his hobby of amassing speeding fines -- but really, it's too easy to evade SO-14 when the prat shoulders him out of the way to open the door. There's a smile on the villain's face and a gleam in his eye faster than his new car shoots down the M4.

##### Mask

The tape deck, the NHS fluorescent lighting and the numbered, formless pawns of the SpecOps system are a simple formality behind which to hide her guilt and her lies.

##### Overwhelmed

"Schitt and Felix and probably even the idiot in charge of Swindon SpecOps will only ever see the Prose Portal as an extortionist's dream," thinks Acheron, "But the worthless peons have no idea of its true worth. Ironic that all those students for whom he was forced to wade through Barthes and Derrida would know it at a glance: the characters are real, tangible, singular and ultimately postmodernism can go fuck itself."

##### Formal

"You know the old adage about porcupines mating very carefully?" Cocytus enquires, wearing his white tie and tails and a smirk for his elder sibling's ball and ego respectively, "Because you should take heed of it, at least with this SO-5 Next woman. I'm sure you knew her once before, didn't you?"

##### Ring

"Look, how this ring encompasseth your finger,  
Even so thy breast encloseth my poor heart;  
Wear both of them for both of them are thine!"  
proclaims Richard to the jubilant Swindon audience, causing Thursday to wonder if she could wear her heart in Landen's ring: she used to keep it on her sleeve, but that was far too dangerous.

##### Sacred

Acheron laughs at Jane's proclamation of her faith in her Edward; "It is fortunate that I intend you no harm, Miss Eyre, for love is the last thing which is sacred."

##### Run

When she calls his name at Thornfield House, he strolls casually into the night, whereas -- perhaps because of which -- she is unable to pursue.

##### Dream

"Look how your eyes are dark-rimmed and languorous," comments Rochester, barely audible from this distance and Hades wonders how often his protégée-turned-adversary dreams of him.

##### Forever

"You'll negotiate, Miss Next," he remarks, "You may be disgustingly righteous but even you will baulk at spending the rest of your life in here," _just to spite me_ , Acheron thinks, but cannot say, for won't she spite him forever anyway?

##### Hurricane

Acheron rejoices in the tempest of flames on Thornfield's roof, not least because they remind him of his brother Phlegethon's all-consuming nature.

##### Promise

"I will be the death of you," he seems to whisper even while she chambers the bullet. She remembers that night and wonders if this will truly work...if she will break his only promise to her.

##### Red

The silver plucks at his chest and she cannot understand why crimson blood runs from his heart instead of golden ichor.

##### Fire

She returns with Rochester when the light does, finding only ashes.

##### Hero

She is Miss Thursday Next, SO-5 and -27, the saviour of Jane Eyre and golden girl of Special Operations PR: a glorified plod.

##### Gravity

While onlookers stare at the scattered parts of the Hispano-Suiza, liberated from their chassis by the chance conversion of 40 000 feet of gravitational potential into kinetic energy, she wonders if any of the fundamental forces of physics hinder his vengeance.

##### Memory

Aornis tinkers with Thursday's mind where her dead brother tinkered with feelings.

##### World

The world of the Outland is "a goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o'the worst," but surely not so much a prison as the confines of her mind.

##### Midnight

It is the only time when he returns to her mortal coil, for which she is grateful, but is it because he comes not more than once, or that he comes at all?

##### Talent

She is a fool to waste her talents on her not-quite-Doppelgängern, when half a page to Jobsworth could have him by her side again.

##### Music

"Un bel di verdremo," is all she can ever remember from _Madama Butterfly_ , she confides to Landen, suddenly recalling that Filbert took her to see it before he was "unavoidably detained;" telling him that it's the only opera which reduces her to tears; so she's glad when he grins and says he'll never buy her a ticket as a wedding anniversary gift; but she isn't because now she'll never disconnect Puccini with her father, who probably broke Chronoguard protocol by taking her, beginning her joy for opera and his Eradication; perhaps starting something far more wretched, the cause that opened her tears to _him_...

##### Silence

"Greatest thrill,  
Not to kill,  
But to have the prize of the night!  
13th disciple who betrayed me - for nothing!"  
Friday bellows out at his first-ever major concert, inexplicably earning his mother's pride even though she can barely understand the words over the guitars and would rather read his lyrics in silence, unable to ignore the mood imparted by the violent, sorrowful melody as he continues:  
"Last dance, first kiss,  
Your touch, my bliss,  
Beauty always comes with dark thoughts!"

##### Forgotten

Landen runs his fingers gently along the frontispiece, etching a pattern in the silvery dust that lingers even here on the smooth, heavy parchment not yet bled to colour by the sun: curiosity be damned, he will not draw his gaze beyond the spidery, ebony-faded ink proclaiming "Thursday, my dearest pupil!" to the signature below.

##### Journey

Granny Next listens to Milton and remembers why she could never stand it:  
"Another part in Squadrons and gross Bands  
... bend Four ways thir flying March, along the Banks  
Of four infernal Rivers, that disgorge  
Into the burning Lake thir baleful streams;  
Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate  
Sad Acheron of Sorrow, black and deep;  
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud  
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon  
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage,"  
her younger self recites, knowing too much of them, despite knowing only their namesakes.


End file.
